Synopses & Reviews
This book is the first one of a work in several volumes, treating the history of the development of topology. The work contains papers which can be classified into 4 main areas. Thus there are contributions dealing with the life and work of individual topologists, with specific schools of topology, with research in topology in various countries, and with the development of topology in different periods. The work is not restricted to topology in the strictest sense but also deals with applications and generalisations in a broad sense. Thus it also treats, e.g., categorical topology, interactions with functional analysis, convergence spaces, and uniform spaces. Written by specialists in the field, it contains a wealth of information which is not available anywhere else.
Synopsis
This account of the History of General Topology has grown out of the special session on this topic at the American Mathematical Society meeting in San Anto- nio, Texas, 1993. It was there that the idea grew to publish a book on the historical development of General Topology. Moreover it was felt that it was important to undertake this project while topologists who knew some of the early researchers were still active. Since the first paper by Frechet, "Generalisation d'un theoreme de Weier- strass," C.R. Acad. Sci. 139, 1904, 848-849, and Hausdorff's classic book, "Grundziige der Mengenlehre," Leipzig, 1914, there have been numerous de- velopments in a multitude of directions and there have been many interactions with a great number of other mathematical fields. We have tried to cover as many of these as possible. Most contributions concern either individual topologists, specific schools, specific periods, specific topics or a combination of these.
Table of Contents
Introduction. Felix Hausdorff (1868-1942);
G. Preusz. Frederic Riesz' Contributions to the Foundations of General Topology;
W.J. Thron. The Contributions of L. Vietoris and H. Tietze to the Foundations of General Topology;
H. Reitberger. Some Aspects of the Work and Influence of R.L. Moore;
B. Fitzpatrick Jr. The Works of Bronislaw Knaster (1893-1980) in Continuum Theory;
J.J. Charatonik. Witold Hurewicz - Life and Work;
K. Borsuk. The Early Work of F.B. Jones;
M.E. Rudin. The Beginning of Topology in the United States and the Moore School;
F. Burton Jones. Some Topologists of the 1940s;
A.H. Stone. Miroslav Katetov (1918-1995);
P. Simon. Origins of Dimension Theory;
M. Katetov, P. Simon. General Topology, in Particular Dimension Theory, in The Netherlands: the Decisive Influence of Brouwer's Intuitionism;
T. Koetsier, J. van Mill. The Flowering of General Topology in Japan;
J. Nagata. Rings of Continuous Functions in the 1950s;
M. Henriksen. Categorical Topology - Its Origins, as Exemplified by the Unfolding of the Theory of Topological Reflections and Coreflections before 1971;
H. Herrlich, G. Strecker. History of Sequential Convergence Spaces;
R. Fric. Interaction between General Topology and Functional Analysis;
E. Kreyszig. Index.